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Phanatic posted:On the more realistic side of things, there's Children of a Dead Earth, which is pretty much Kerbal but with railguns and missiles and nuclear thermal rockets. Realistic or not I just cant get into it when all the ships are bland featureless cones 
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Aug 15, 2018 18:59
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Pretty sure Canada isn't at risk of losing its territories, but rather the natural resources off the coast(s) of said territories. Fish yes, oil no, so guess who gives a gently caress
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Aug 15, 2018 19:07
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Libluini posted:Man, your ignorance about things are done in politics is staggering. Those treaties won't be worth the paper they could theoretically be printed on. And yes, war crimes are very acceptable! It's like you never watch the news or if you never even looked at a history book from afar. Are you Henry Kissinger? I think the way the entire international world order reorganized itself as a result of some of the things you alluded I guess just never happened? Did the Hague not punish people for war crimes during the Yugoslav wars? quote:If that is all you want to say, why do we even have this discussion. "Nothing is certain", is not really a good base for talking, or did you want us to just post "Yes" a couple dozen times? This isn't what is happening, Alchenar is making a claim, I am disputing that claim. I presented arguments they have largely not responded to; I am saying "Nothing is certain" as the summary conclusion of my argument as to not suggest that My Way Is The Correct Way Of Space Fighting(tm), but theirs is certainly not one to be accepted at face value, because of the arguments I did in fact present that show that the very idea has some fundamental problems even in theory, like nearly halting problem level of problematic that can't be resolved even if you pretend there is a practical technological solution at some point in the future; there ARE limits to what computer science is capable of and that applies to drones. Alchenars idea of space combat is a possible very plausible future sure, go right ahead and say it is possible, but I am not going to agree it is certain without basically all three points being addressed. Which "lol treaties don't actually ~exist~" is not an argument that addresses that point because again, the Washington Naval treaty had actual money spent on its implementation, and influenced a generation of warship designs and allowed some nations to seriously experiment into newer forms of naval warfare as a means of getting around said treaty. Alchenar posted:I mean there are a few core assumptions we can build on. There's a trend towards autonomous systems happening right now on Earth so the idea that a human is necessary is evidently not true. Physics isn't going to change for the foreseeable future, so conflict plausible revolves around opposing forces on different orbits deliberately converging to weapons range (space is big, so you aren't going to get battles unless both sides choose to have them). 'Weapons range' means flinging missiles/railgun rounds(conservation of momentum is a thing though!)/laser beams at each other. Saying that trends suggest a certain end point isn't logically sound and is actually contradicted by the laws of physics (such as entropy), it's like saying Moore's Law will continue forever when it's already hitting limits in material science. I can agree that the trends suggests that drones will have a future in space warfare, not that they completely obsolete humans. Or that they are 100% certain to do so which is what I understand the argument to be. The argument you just made here is eerily similar to arguments that fighters don't need cannon armament anymore because BVR missiles is the future and planes will never engage in dogfights ever again, whoops, Vietnam happened. The gap between theory and practice has constantly proven itself to be just too wide by the smallest of margins to the eternal chagrin of policy makers. Jobbo_Fett posted:Pretty sure Canada isn't at risk of losing its territories, but rather the natural resources off the coast(s) of said territories. I was taught during basic in the reserves that the on land resources and our sovereignty in general was at risk unless we maintained regular patrols; I see this as relevant point of comparison for thinking about the future legal challenges exploiting the solar system presents.
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Aug 15, 2018 19:21
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Raenir Salazar posted:Are you Henry Kissinger? I think the way the entire international world order reorganized itself as a result of some of the things you alluded I guess just never happened? pffffffft, hahahahahahahahaha ahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahahahaha
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Aug 15, 2018 19:26
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Alchenar posted:I mean there are a few core assumptions we can build on. There's a trend towards autonomous systems happening right now on Earth so the idea that a human is necessary is evidently not true. Physics isn't going to change for the foreseeable future, so conflict plausible revolves around opposing forces on different orbits deliberately converging to weapons range (space is big, so you aren't going to get battles unless both sides choose to have them). 'Weapons range' means flinging missiles/railgun rounds(conservation of momentum is a thing though!)/laser beams at each other. Would humans need to be on station for, e.g., VBSS or other scenarios where the objective is to preserve the other ship (as evidence if nothing else), or can autonomous systems handle that too? Obviously I'm using the assumption that an armed space force would have similar mission sets to modern navies or air forces, including interceptions or other things where the destruction of the other party is not necessarily the immediate objective, but I may be wrong there. Davin Valkri fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Aug 15, 2018 |
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Aug 15, 2018 19:31
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Kemper Boyd posted:The terrain on the Karelian Isthmus doesn't change much between Leningrad and Viborg. It's mainly forest dotted by fields and lakes and not that good tank country. There is one helpful thing that happened: lakes, marshes, rivers and even the sea froze solid enough to carry tanks, and this caused a huge headache for Finnish GHQ as by this point there really weren't any reserves left. The most efficient defense would be to make cracks to the ice with explosives, but they would just refreeze over night.
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Aug 15, 2018 19:31
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my dad posted:pffffffft, hahahahahahahahaha Lets put it this way, do you in your personal opinion, believe it is acceptable in a system you want for your country, as in this is as if you were the one in charge, to be unable to to avoid collateral damage in case of intelligence failure? Assuming there was at least a 20% of this happening at any particular encounter. Would you categorically reject this consideration from drawing up the system requirements without a second thought? I note that smart munitions are very often presented as a panacea for collateral damage and minimizing civilian casualties which seems to have driven procurement priorities regarding such systems. quote:Deptula is skeptical because avoiding civilian casualties and unintentional, or collateral, damage is a key consideration of every attack assignment contemplated by U.S. air forces, right from the initiation of the planning process, days, weeks, months or even years before a strike occurs. He knows that the imperative to cause as little damage and as little loss of life as possible is part of a larger concept that has evolved in the Air Force's thinking.
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Aug 15, 2018 19:34
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zoux posted:No heroic captain shouting maneuvers to a helmsman, outwitting his opponent through tactical brilliance, but instead you're either dead or victorious before you even realize you're in combat. Makes for terrible drama. I'm going from memory here, but that sounds like the way space battles are described in Halderman's Forever War. (A retelling of aspects of the Vietnam war in sci-fi terms.) At one point the officers are sitting around in a base watching the computer project the probability of various trajectories for the enemy ships, knowing they'll live or die depending on the outcome.
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Aug 15, 2018 19:40
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Cessna posted:I'm going from memory here, but that sounds like the way space battles are described in Halderman's Forever War. (A retelling of aspects of the Vietnam war in sci-fi terms.)
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Aug 15, 2018 19:44
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Raenir Salazar posted:Which "lol treaties don't actually ~exist~" is not an argument that addresses that point because again, the Washington Naval treaty had actual money spent on its implementation, and influenced a generation of warship designs and allowed some nations to seriously experiment into newer forms of naval warfare as a means of getting around said treaty. And navies
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Aug 15, 2018 19:45
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Raenir Salazar posted:Washington Naval treaty had actual money spent on its implementation, and influenced a generation of warship designs and allowed some nations to seriously experiment into newer forms of naval warfare as a means of getting around said treaty. do you think the Washington Naval treaty forms a successful base for future arms limitation treaties
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Aug 15, 2018 19:48
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aphid_licker posted:What does that map to in the Vietnam war? That specific scene doesn't. And, more accurately, the book is more about the experience of a veteran of the war than the war itself. In the book the big theme is "time." Spaceships travel fast enough to be affected by time dilation. They'll go out on missions that take months (much of which they'll sleep through) for them, but years - decades - go by on earth, and things really change in the meantime, leaving them disconnected from the society that sent them to war...
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Aug 15, 2018 19:51
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Seeing as that, up to this point, both the circumstances that would lead to fighting in space, as well as the technologies involved in engaging in such, are wholly fictional, I'm inclined to give sci fi writers the benefit of a doubt. If people tried space combat right now, the only thing worth fighting up there for are satellites. I don't know if any military has plans for how to attack those right now, although the US did have some kind of half-baked scheme to steal satellites with the space shuttle's grabby arm. I think the chief limitation to any real conflict up there is the cost involved in getting anything out there. Both military assets to fight and targets to be worth attacking. Any development that greatly reduces that cost would also reduce the costs with getting humans onsite to deal with things more directly.
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Aug 15, 2018 19:51
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:do you think the Washington Naval treaty forms a successful base for future arms limitation treaties Did you just look at me saying "Washington Naval Treaty" and then decided to ignore all the other words around it or the context in which I used it? I used it because even as a flawed treaty it materially affected naval design and construction programs for a whole generation of ship building. There are also plenty of successful arms control treaties, I didn't use them because I felt the WNT was more interesting for this discussion. Cessna posted:And navies I believe mentioned this. quote:Washington Naval treaty is a good example, where even though Japan and Germany cheated, it did cause them to keep it in mind in their cheating.
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Aug 15, 2018 19:54
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Raenir Salazar posted:Did you just look at me saying "Washington Naval Treaty" and then decided to ignore all the other words around it or the context in which I used it? I used it because even as a flawed treaty it materially affected naval design and construction programs for a whole generation of ship building. When I'm at work I don't hold up a project that went badly as an example of why to think projects will work - and how they will work - in the future.
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Aug 15, 2018 19:56
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SlothfulCobra posted:If people tried space combat right now, the only thing worth fighting up there for are satellites. I don't know if any military has plans for how to attack those right now https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-satellite_missile_test https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Burnt_Frost It's a thing
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Aug 15, 2018 19:56
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SlothfulCobra posted:If people tried space combat right now, the only thing worth fighting up there for are satellites. I don't know if any military has plans for how to attack those right now, although the US did have some kind of half-baked scheme to steal satellites with the space shuttle's grabby arm. ASAT weaponry goes back literal decades. Both us and China have recently shot down satellites in LEO with ground-based missiles. The USAF successfully destroyed an orbiting satellite with an air-to-space missile launched from an F-15 back in 1985. And the Soviets had satellites that could maneuver to cross orbits with a target satellite, and then blow the gently caress up when they were close enough to kill the target with fragmentation.
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Aug 15, 2018 20:04
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Cessna posted:When I'm at work I don't hold up a project that went badly as an example of why to think projects will work - and how they will work - in the future. That... Was not the point of my argument. Also the Treaty didn't "went badly" at a glance it mostly succeeded at controlling the naval arms race for a time between 1922 and the London Naval Treaty of 1930; but again whether the treaty succeeded or failed was besides the point; what matters is what it actually resulted in. Also I am pretty sure the WNT influence later arms control treaties which learned from its perceived failures, IIRC from my old polisci textbook.
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Aug 15, 2018 20:15
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Cessna posted:I'm going from memory here, but that sounds like the way space battles are described in Halderman's Forever War. (A retelling of aspects of the Vietnam war in sci-fi terms.) Forever War is a must-read for fans of sci fi and military fiction Phanatic posted:ASAT weaponry goes back literal decades. Both us and China have recently shot down satellites in LEO with ground-based missiles. The USAF successfully destroyed an orbiting satellite with an air-to-space missile launched from an F-15 back in 1985. And the Soviets had satellites that could maneuver to cross orbits with a target satellite, and then blow the gently caress up when they were close enough to kill the target with fragmentation. I've always wondered if there's secret SDI stuff up there. Did that ever get so far as to put poo poo in orbit
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Aug 15, 2018 20:20
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Davin Valkri posted:Would humans need to be on station for, e.g., VBSS or other scenarios where the objective is to preserve the other ship (as evidence if nothing else), or can autonomous systems handle that too? Obviously I'm using the assumption that an armed space force would have similar mission sets to modern navies or air forces, including interceptions or other things where the destruction of the other party is not necessarily the immediate objective, but I may be wrong there. https://www.businessinsider.com/darpa-drone-swarm-project-2017-12?IR=T This is the future of air warfare, likely naval and finally ground. There will be spaceships carrying people around to do stuff, but by the time people are actually having to think about warfare in the solar system the idea of letting a human anywhere near the combat zone won't occur to anyone.
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Aug 15, 2018 20:25
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Biffmotron posted:I read it and liked it. I'm not an expert on the period, but Figes does a solid job presenting the Great Power politics of the mid-19th century, and the way that the state of the Ottoman Empire turned into a war between Russia, Britain, and France. He's less good on the actual military history, but then the Crimean War was such an omnishambles its not easy to write great military history about it.
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Aug 15, 2018 20:44
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Alchenar posted:https://www.businessinsider.com/darpa-drone-swarm-project-2017-12?IR=T The article doesn't answer his question, and also: quote:Gremlins could well be described as a technological leap in manned-unmanned teaming beyond state of the art technology, as it enables drones to launch, perform missions and then return to a host aircraft. As algorithms for increased levels of autonomy advance, aircraft will be able to control drones from the cockpit with a pilot in a command and control role, service experts have explained. The article doesn't seem to at all suggest the end goal is to replace manned aircraft with unmanned aircraft, but to supplement manned aircraft with enhanced capabilities drones offer. edit to add: The articles I don't think at all either supports the idea that you can extrapolate one napkinwaffle project that may or may not succeed to the navy and ground forces either so I don't know why you keep insisting it to be the case. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Aug 15, 2018 |
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Aug 15, 2018 20:45
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Autonomous and semi autonomous combat drones that can engage at distances beyond immediate control already exist: they’re called missiles. The same basic concerns as we already grapple with re:, for example, rules of engagement for BVR AAMs are pretty similar to what we have in a theoretical mars/earth situation. Will we have fully autonomous combat capabilities? Yeah, but they will probably be the same kind of “only in case of SHTF” capabilities as BVR poo poo is now. For various reasons we want more certain ID before launching under most circumstances. Could we go loud with a squadrons launching AIM-120s en masse? Sure, but by that point we’re dealing with something crazy enough that all bets are off. In short we would probably have that capability but if it was ever used we’d probably also see the two planets tossing city killing strategic weapons at each other at the same time as the drones go completely off their leashes. Edit: oh hello entire new page
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Aug 15, 2018 20:54
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Alchenar posted:I mean there are a few core assumptions we can build on. There's a trend towards autonomous systems happening right now on Earth so the idea that a human is necessary is evidently not true. Physics isn't going to change for the foreseeable future, so conflict plausible revolves around opposing forces on different orbits deliberately converging to weapons range (space is big, so you aren't going to get battles unless both sides choose to have them). 'Weapons range' means flinging missiles/railgun rounds(conservation of momentum is a thing though!)/laser beams at each other. Hitting a target that's actively trying not to get hit - including physical evasion and ECM - at the velocities and distances space can impose is a non-trivial problem. Maybe to the point that it's not feasible, and the only opportunity to get good effect on target is to get a lot closer at significantly lower velocities. Which changes a lot of the assumptions about what space combat looks like, what the ideal design for it looks like, and what kind of time scales decision making is taking place in. It assumes autonomous systems that are clever enough to be acceptable independent combatants are significantly more robust than humans, while being small enough in volume and mass that you fit them in a spaceship. The same applies to all the other systems you're depending on for actually fighting. We do already have pretty robust systems of those types, yes, but now you're exposing them to vacuum, intense radiation, and microgravity. It assumes all the underlying technologies advance at roughly equal paces, and that none of them get significantly ahead of the others. The split-second, ultra-deadly passing engagement model is probably the most likely given what we currently know, but that's grading on a scale. We really don't have that much experience with trying to do stuff like this in space, orders of magnitude less than what we have with even aerial combat, and there's plenty of disagreement about what that's going to look like in the next decade.
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Aug 15, 2018 21:30
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Alchenar posted:https://www.businessinsider.com/darpa-drone-swarm-project-2017-12?IR=T https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oazwTDeqF54
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Aug 15, 2018 21:39
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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A lot of the 'futurewar in space' things also seem to be heavily dependent upon rather impressive drive capabilities. Bigger stuff is going to require bigger forces to move and it's likely that the emissions of such drives would also be a great liability. Becomes a question more of if maneuverability is more important than stealth/misdirection.
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Aug 15, 2018 21:45
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Nenonen posted:There is one helpful thing that happened: lakes, marshes, rivers and even the sea froze solid enough to carry tanks, and this caused a huge headache for Finnish GHQ as by this point there really weren't any reserves left. The most efficient defense would be to make cracks to the ice with explosives, but they would just refreeze over night. surely the best option would be to mine the ice - even smaller mines that would normally not be effective could send tanks down to the bottom of a frozen lake expensive in mines i guess
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Aug 15, 2018 22:10
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CoolCab posted:surely the best option would be to mine the ice - even smaller mines that would normally not be effective could send tanks down to the bottom of a frozen lake i think it's hard to plant a mine in ice
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Aug 15, 2018 22:13
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CoolCab posted:surely the best option would be to mine the ice - even smaller mines that would normally not be effective could send tanks down to the bottom of a frozen lake Its pretty hard to dig holes in ice, wouldnt they blow up if they ever refroze with a new layer of water on top? Leaving them n the surface makes it easy to clear them. Dont think ice is a good medium for mines. Cessna posted:I'm going from memory here, but that sounds like the way space battles are described in Halderman's Forever War. (A retelling of aspects of the Vietnam war in sci-fi terms.) This is basically being infantry in an industrial war, except you will never lnow whether youre hosed or not.
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Aug 15, 2018 22:16
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Raenir Salazar posted:That... Was not the point of my argument. Also the Treaty didn't "went badly" at a glance it mostly succeeded at controlling the naval arms race for a time between 1922 and the London Naval Treaty of 1930; but again whether the treaty succeeded or failed was besides the point; what matters is what it actually resulted in. Japan being really, really pissed off at the UK and USA?
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Aug 15, 2018 22:18
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I postulate that once a culture has reached real hyperspace technology the current arms control treaties will have more influence on their weapon design then our current understanding of the physical limits on weapons design. Also, that for a superluminal civilization the implied necessity of timetravel should influence all combat doctrine, down to knife fights. One of my favorite science fiction series has most battles take part in hyperspace, which is two dimensional.
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Aug 15, 2018 22:19
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Cessna posted:Japan being really, really pissed off at the UK and USA? the RN building a really loving ugly set of battleships
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Aug 15, 2018 22:27
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Taerkar posted:A lot of the 'futurewar in space' things also seem to be heavily dependent upon rather impressive drive capabilities. Bigger stuff is going to require bigger forces to move and it's likely that the emissions of such drives would also be a great liability. Becomes a question more of if maneuverability is more important than stealth/misdirection.
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Aug 15, 2018 22:30
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Alchenar posted:I mean there are a few core assumptions we can build on. There's a trend towards autonomous systems happening right now on Earth so the idea that a human is necessary is evidently not true. Physics isn't going to change for the foreseeable future, so conflict plausible revolves around opposing forces on different orbits deliberately converging to weapons range (space is big, so you aren't going to get battles unless both sides choose to have them). 'Weapons range' means flinging missiles/railgun rounds(conservation of momentum is a thing though!)/laser beams at each other. An exception could be made by "upgrading" the human body with implants, including trying to boost reaction speeds by overclocking our brain/nervous system. There are examples in SF where for example drugs or direct neural connections are used to make a brain faster, sometimes fast enough to keep up with an intelligent machine. (Of course, as long as most of the brain is still meat, the effects could be devastating or even deadly. But when has that ever stopped us?  )
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Aug 15, 2018 22:46
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Today is Polish Army Day! My hometown had a big festival (like they do every year, in commemoration of this thing), so I took some photos for you fine folks. Some are poor quality, but that's the beauty of using a lovely phone camera. PT-91 Twardy main battle tank.  Top of the Twardy turret. Those hatches are really small.   Driver's seat, featuring my pale-rear end knee. It's REALLY cramped and claustrophobic. I'd probably go crazy if I had to sit in there with the hatch down.  Rosomak APC.  Interior of the Rosomak. Doesn't look particularly spacious.  A military STAR truck. This one is notable for being clean.  A modernized ZU-23-2 AA gun.  Some infantry small arms.  A M1043 A2 Humvee.
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Aug 15, 2018 22:46
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:the RN building a really loving ugly set of battleships The Nelson and Rodney were majestic as gently caress you philistine.  
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Aug 15, 2018 23:05
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I mean I don't see anything wrong with them myself, I love a good wooden deck surface.
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Aug 15, 2018 23:10
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Cessna posted:Japan being really, really pissed off at the UK and USA? They were pissed off already for other reasons, and the treaty meant Japan wouldn't be drawn into a naval arms race with the USA that it couldn't win, a fact that some within the IJN recognized.
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Aug 15, 2018 23:18
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I now really regret this derail.
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Aug 15, 2018 23:24
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What the hell are you people even arguing about. EDIT: If it's that conventions, treaties, political realities can force people to pursue military doctrine in not exactly operationally optimal ways for long periods of time, then yeah, surely that is obvious. Wars these days don't tend to start with tactical nukes. Fangz fucked around with this message at 23:42 on Aug 15, 2018 |
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Aug 15, 2018 23:33
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